critical semiotics/genealogy/pragmatics, also known as reading

Author: untimely rhetor

In a scene from the 2003 HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Joe comes home to his wife (named “Harper” and nicknamed “buddy”), with whom he’d just had a fight the previous night, and tells her about Jacob wrestling with the Angel (see clip; part 1, chapter 2). He had this book of bible stories as a kid and there was this image that, he says, he looked at “twenty times every day”; he doesn’t “even remember the story, or why they’re wrestling—just the picture.” Struck by it, Joe now offers the image as the answer to the question his wife had asked the previous night. This was the question that, because it had gone unanswered, or had only been further closeted with answers, had led to the fight, the question that Joe, teary-eyed, indirectly answers by describing the image:

Jacob is young, and very strong. And the Angel is a … beautiful man with … golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it, many nights, and … it’s me, in that struggle … fierce and unfair. The Angel’s not human and it holds nothing back … so how can anyone human win? What kind of a fight is that? It’s not just! Soul thrown down to dust, your heart torn out from God’s, but … you can’t not lose …

What is Joe wrestling, as it were, to say here? Who is the angel that Jacob is wrestling with? What does the angel signify in this story, in Joe’s memory? And what is it about Jacob with which Joe identifies? The scene that Joe recreates from memory is a fight, in some ways a repetition of what took place between him and his wife, indeed a physical manifestation of what almost, but did not, verbally come out in last night’s fight. On the surface, the angel is the adversary with whom Joe, in the person of Jacob, finds himself fighting, the danger from which he aims to liberate himself in a contest in which he wants to “not lose” but fears he “can’t not” … In other words, the scene, as Joe presents it, is a struggle, a relation of conflict, of hostility, an intricate contest with the enemy. And yet Jacob, as Joe also says, is “young and very strong,” the angel “beautiful,” “golden,” “a beautiful man with golden hair and wings,” the two engaged in a fight Joe “still dream[s] about […] many nights.” The scene that Joe recreates as a belated answer, truer than the direct answers he had given the previous night, is thus not just a fight, but the layering of multiple fights on top of each other, fights, as it were, multiply doubled, or a fight doubling itself into multiple forms: the answer that Joe couldn’t give in the fight (with his wife) is itself a fight (between man and angel) that he aims not to but knows he will lose, something he at the same time unconsciously wants to lose, i.e. a given both resisted and desired, fighting inside of him (“it’s me, in that struggle”), the two sides, the(ir) doubleness, the cause of both the fight/s and of the dream of its passing/return, what Joe is both, and “still,” fighting for/against. Thus the contestatory, undecidable space between two sides, the suspension of doubleness characterized by struggle, what Joe refers to as a “fight,” is, through the recreation of a memory / the painting of fantasy, the answer that, after all, if indirectly, Joe gives to his wife to suspend its (re)surfacing, the process of going around in circles ultimately providing, through doubling, the answer in like kind.

In this (multiply doubled) fight, Joe identifies the angel as the enemy. “The Angel’s not human,” he says, “and it holds nothing back,” which makes the fight “fierce and unfair.” Celestial, the angel is not only more powerful; he is unburdened by the rules of men, which, it can be inferred, is what gives him power: “hold[ing] nothing back,” the angel does what he wants, unlike Joe who cannot answer the question, who cannot bear the answer. This makes the angel beautiful, seductive, like his robe and wings, white but thick, ruffled, shaded, impure, amoral, out of this world—his power, seduction, and otherness, the way that he’s “not human,” both constituting a threat and inciting desire (which may be the more fatal threat), hence his designation as the enemy to be defeated, disavowed … The angel is the opponent, Joe says, he “holds nothing back,” yet once he’d caught Joe, once Jacob had been enclosed, the angel struggles to be let go, he holds back. That is, the struggle is not only threatening and seductive, but seductive and frustrating, frustrating thereby seductive, “fierce and unfair.” Jacob’s youthful strength emanates from his body, the shapes sculpted by his muscles the dark match of the ones on the angel. The power expressed on Jacob’s body mark not so much the effort to defeat or escape from an enemy, but the exertion, seemingly much stronger than the angel’s, to hold the angel down, keep him there, embrace him. Joe says that the angel “holds nothing back,” yet it is man who is naked, whose strength is more pronounced, who has the clear and determined expression on his face, who’s disrobed from the darkness of red to uncover his darker flesh. This is in contrast to the angel, whose body is covered by cloth, whose face is subdued, frugal, who seems to want to stop what is happening. The scene is supposed to be a struggle, but it is less adversarial than erotic, indeed erotic at its root, the vigorous expression of Jacob’s desire to pull the angel to the ground, down to his world, to make him stay—in which, however, the angel holds back, shows restraint by hiding his face, by attempting to fly off. The holding back makes Jacob want to hold on tighter, makes Joe still dream about the angel. In other words, the withholding of the higher being is the hook that seduces desire that at the same time frustrates it indefinitely, impossibly, thus seducing man, in fact inflaming his desire—and all over again … “What kind of a fight is that?” Joe asks. “It’s not just.” Your heart is torn out from God’s, but and by that very fact you constantly seek God, but instead you find his messenger, the angel, you think he’ll lift you up from dust, but, in fact, you’re just pulling him down—but, as it turns out, you can’t do that either. “You can’t not lose.”

The angel is indeed a celestial being, but the lowest kind—an unworthy substitute, a debased supplement, not much higher than man. “Are you a homo?” Joe’s wife asks him the previous night. This is the question to which Joe offers multiple answers: “No.” “What if I am …?” “Does it make any difference that I might be one thing deep within, no matter how wrong or ugly that thing is, so long as I fought with everything I have to kill it?” And then: the duplicitous image of man wrestling with the angel. The angel that man is wrestling with, as it turns out, is not that different from himself, not much higher, is in fact intimately related to him: simultaneously the ideal desired and the fellow fallen. The angel, in other words, is the double of man, and in multiple senses: the other image of himself, the object of desire and the subject of prohibition, the figure by which man works through his all-too-human desires. The figure of the angel, not that different from man, indeed based on man, intimates how man is his own narcissistic object of desire and author of the law that prohibits this abject desire for oneself, man’s abjection in the first place the reason why the angel is desired and why the angel, the higher being, withholds. In other words, because he is a desiring being, man is in a fight with himself, the other with whom he’s fighting figured in the form of an angel, the double that allows man to get at his duplicitous, abject/narcissistic desire through triangulation. Thinking that he’s fighting the angel, who’s unjustly and impossibly imposing on him, Joe has in fact taken up its role, forbidding his desires thinking that this gives him power (to control his desires), unconsciously identifying with the angel against and in order to repair the pre-given identification with Jacob, the man who holds on to the angel, i.e. man and his wretched desire. In the process, Joe denies as well what draws him to the angel in the first place, what makes him not want to let it go, namely, human desire and its paradox, this suspending it in its doubleness and perpetuating it in a crisis state, causing it to resurface every now and then in increasingly tensed fights with Harper. Is this the only choice? Can man really recognize and let the angel come out of the closet, in its doubleness? But the angel is itself debased, but a pawn in the condition of doubleness that keeps man, in his desire, in a vicious circle. Is it only through this abject/narcissistic form of power that is the angel, the queer triangulation of divine prohibition and abject desire, that man, in his fallen condition, has any fighting chance at fulfillment at all?

What theory of language emerges in Gilles Deleuze’s reading of friend and fellow “French philosopher” Michel Foucault in Foucault (1986)? Foucault, Deleuze claims, “deals only with statements” (1), which are distinguished from propositions and phrases as “essentially rare,” de facto and de jure (2). Propositions (undefined; defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the information content expressed by linguistic elements) are “stacked on top of one another” and “can be thought of in any number of ways [… in which ] the differences between types [… can be used] to express any one in terms of the others” (2). This vertical hierarchy of propositions compose a “typology [… that] lays itself open to abstraction, creat[ing] a type for each level that is in fact superior to its constituent elements” (2), presumably by which a proposition gains value or makes sense. A proposition is thus understood from above (perhaps in terms of its information content or truth value), explained by a higher “type.” Phrases, implicitly defined as “what is really said” (2), are on the other hand characterized by a “horizontal relationship […] in which each seems to respond to another” (1) yet “one phrase denies the existence of others” (2). This foreclosure makes the phrase de facto rare, yet implies “virtual or latent content [that, perhaps through horizontal reference,] multiplies meaning and opens itself up to interpretation, creating a ‘hidden discourse’ that de jure is a source of great richness” (2). Both rare and rich, phrases are thus almost but not quite statements. In fact, this richness subjects phrases to “a dialectic [… that] is always open to contradiction” (2), which, ironically, is yet another avenue for multiplication. “Contradiction and abstraction are the means by which phrases and propositions are multiplied, since one phrase can always be opposed to another, or one proposition formed on the basis of another” (2-3).

In contrast, “statements […] inhabit a general realm of rarity [… where there is] no sense of possibility or potentiality”: “everything in them is real and all reality is manifestly present” (3). As such, given a statement, there are no other statements implied (even if there are other statements, they are of the same status as, not merely implied by, the first) and there is no higher type that, while not manifest, abstractly lends it reality. It seems that Deleuze is talking about a statement at a particular time/place, i.e. a particular statement: “All that counts is what has been formulated at a given moment, including any blanks and gaps” (3). In fact, however, what is contingently characteristic is ontologically definitive: “Statements can be opposed to one another, and placed in hierarchical order,” but these “contradictions” and “comparisons” are located “within this space of rarity” (the space of statements) “linked to a mobile diagonal line” by which statements are related (3). Thus what seems like a characterization of a statement at the moment of its utterance turns out to be the definition of the statement (what makes it a statement, what defines statements in general). This definition, as Deleuze/Foucault assert, hinges on rarity: “statements are essentially rare” (2). This implies “not only [that] few things are said, but [that] ‘few things can be said [or stated]’” (3). This is a matter not of originality (“no originality is needed in order to produce [statements as] a statement always represents a transmission of particular elements distributed in a corresponding space” [3]), but of regularity, the statement “associated not with the transmission of particular elements presupposed by it but with the shape of the whole curve to which they are related, and more generally with the rules governing the particular field in which they are distributed and reproduced” (4). Thus rather than produced by or referring to a particular subject or context (“there are many places from which any subject can produce the same statement”), “a statement accumulates into a specific object which then becomes preserved, transmitted or repeated” (4).

Three Realms that Encircle the Realm, Repetition and Difference, Identity and the Subject

Elaborating, Deleuze notes the “three different realms of space which encircle any statement [posited in its own realm of rarity]” corresponding to three different functions of the statement, three senses of its regularity (4). “There is collateral space […] formed from other statements that are part of the same group” on the basis of “rules of formation [that] cannot be reduced either to axioms, as in the case of propositions, or to a single context, as in the case of phrases” (4-5). Whereas axioms are higher types that “determine certain constant and intrinsic factors and define a homogeneous system” and a particular context is one among many systems delimited according to “extrinsic variable factors,” rules of formation are immanent, “found on the same level as” the statement, which “is inseparable from an inherent variant” and “operates neither laterally nor vertically but transversally” (5). With statements, “we never remain wholly within a single system but are continually passing from one to the other (even within a single language)” and “a group […] is […] ‘formed’ by rules of change or variation to be found on the same level, and these rules make the ‘family’ a medium for dispersion and heterogeneity” (5). For instance, “even when they seem to operate within the same language, statements of a discursive formation move from description to observation, calculation, institution and prescription, and use several systems or languages in the process” (5). As such, this space is characterized by adjacency or association in which “each statement is inseparable [from a multiplicity] via certain rules of change (vectors)” and “each statement is itself a multiplicity, not a structure or a system”—a topology rather than a typology or dialectic (6).

There is “correlative space,” “concerned with the link which a statement entertains […] with its subjects, objects and concepts” (6). Rather than the “linguistic ‘I,’” the subject of enunciation that links the phrase to “the intrinsic constant (the form of the ‘I’) and the extrinsic variables (where he who says ‘I’ creates a sense of form),” the statement refers “to certain intrinsic positions which are extremely variable and form part of the statement itself” (6). “The same statement can [for example] offer several different positions for the speaking subject” and be stated in different contexts for various reasons, with the “positions stem[ming] from the statement itself” (7). Rather than the external referent (“information content” in the SEP) that predicates a proposition’s intrinsic purpose on something “extrinsic and variable,” “a statement has a ‘discursive object’ which does not derive in any sense from a particular state of things, but stems from the statement itself” (7-8). Rather than a signified, “an extrinsic variable to which [a word] is related by virtue of its signifiers (an intrinsic constant),” statements “possess their own discursive concepts or ‘schemata’ […] to be found at the intersection of different systems and are cut across by the statement” that account, for example, for “the groupings and contrasts which medical statements make between various different symptoms at any particular age of discursive formation” (8). “If statements can be distinguished from words, phrases or propositions, it is because they contain their own functions of subject, object, and concept in the form of ‘derivatives’” such that “what seems accidental from the viewpoint of words, phrases and propositions becomes the rule from the viewpoint of statements” (9). In short, subject, object, and concept, according to Deleuze/Foucault, derive from the statement itself, and intrinsically rather than contingently.

This does not mean, however, that the statement is closed in on itself. There is, finally, “the complementary space of non-discursive formations ([Deleuze’s translation of Foucault’s] ‘instructions, political events, economic practices and processes’)” (9). This, Deleuze implies, is the space of institutions extrinsic to yet connected to discourse in a relation of mutual implication: “Any institution implies the existence of statements such as a constitution, charter, contracts, registrations and enrolments. Conversely, statements refer back to an institutional milieu which is necessary for the formation both of the objects which arise in such examples of the statement and of the subject who speaks from this position” (9). Importantly, Deleuze argues that the relation “between the non-discursive formations of institutions and the discursive formations of statements” is not one of expression (“a sort of vertical parallelism [… in which] two expressions symboliz[e] one another”) or reflection (“a horizontal causality in which events and institutions would determine the nature of the supposed author of the statement”) (9-10). Rather, “non-discursive milieux, which are not in themselves situated either inside or outside the group of statements […,] form the above-mentioned limit [of discursive relations], the specific horizon without which these objects could neither appear nor be assigned a place in the statement itself” (10). Thus the relation between them is one of repetition (“only ‘the statement may be repeated’”), but under strict conditions: “The area of the distribution, the allocation of unique elements, the sequence of place and event, the link established with an instituted milieu—in each case, all these must be the same in order to give the statement a ‘materiality’ that makes it repeatable” (10).

I would argue that the text of the moment is The Man in the High Castle, the book written by Philip K. Dick (1962) and the series created by Frank Spotnitz (2015) based on the premise that the Allies lost WWII to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, an alternate history pursued in two genres with substantial differences. The novel reads more like philosophy as it makes us privy to the characters’ thoughts while the series is a suspense thriller, hence its more obvious plot structure and emphasis on action. Race, especially in the uncanny reversals between white and yellow, is very palpable in the novel, but Dick’s characterization of Juliana leaves a lot to be desired (an understatement; although what she does toward the end does make up for it) whereas she is the lead in the series. The most striking difference, however, lies in the depiction of the Japanese, a difference, I argue, that sheds light on the various forms taken by imperialist power predicated on violence, repression, and the blatant disregard for human life, and hence on degrees of absolute evil.

Weirdly, the Japanese are portrayed in the novel—I don’t quite know how to put it—as “too nice” (again, I would stress how weird this is). Maybe this is because, unlike in the series where they are abrasively present, the Kempeitai, the secret police of the Imperial Japanese Army, does not figure prominently in the novel; as such, we only get acquainted with Japanese characters that, as in the series, are sympathetic. The portrayal of the Japanese, however, does not rely merely on omission. Early on, we find Tagomi, Trade Minister in San Francisco (part of the Pacific States ruled by the Japanese), a “kindly” (212) “Buddhist” (211), the figure of wisdom in both the novel and the series, telling a German co-conspirator, “During the war, […] I held minor post in District of China. In Shanghai. There, at Hongkew, a settlement of Jews, interned by Imperial Government for duration. Kept alive by JOINT relief. The Nazi minister at Shanghai requested we massacre the Jews. I recall my superiors’ answer. It was, ‘Such was not in accord with humanitarian considerations.’ They rejected the request as barbaric. It impressed me” (76). This is not historically consistent, even in the context of the alternate history of the novel. Japanese soldiers were notorious in their brutality in WWII in places like the Philippines—just ask the comfort women and the soldiers of the Death March. War crimes and human rights violations were part and parcel of life in an empire that, like its German counterpart, was militarist, state nationalist, expansionist, and totalitarian, if under the banner of the sun.

In contrast, in the series, the Japanese police is well represented, and they’re not as bad as the Nazis, but … Juliana’s foray into the Neutral Zone (the Rockies) in a quest, as her sister’s substitute (not in the novel), to join the Resistance and find the Man in the High Castle puts Frank, her boyfriend whose grandfather happens to be Jewish, in the hands of Inspector Kido, the head of the Kempeitai (the analogous scene in the book is Frank’s arrest by American policemen, who threaten, even though he’s US-born, to deport him to Germany [205-6]). Kido brings in Frank’s sisters and her kids as well, locks them in a room and then tells Frank, “You’ve heard of Zyklon D? […] It is much improved since the war. Odorless and fast-acting. They’ll fall asleep and never wake up” (S1E2) (in contrast, in the novel, Frank reflects about how the Japanese “would no more set up gas ovens than they would melt their wives into sealing wax” [10]). The allusion to the Nazi gas chambers is unmistakable, if made more “civilized”—consistent with what in the novel is alluded to as Japanese subtlety in contrast to white crudeness —this form of torture suggested as deliberate, Kido having told Frank earlier that “Jews don’t get to decide if they’re Jews.” Kido does all this so that Frank would tell him where Juliana is; otherwise, he doesn’t care: “There are no Jews in Japan, after all.” Kido, in other words, is not genocidal, but he’s all too willing to abide by Nazi genocidal policies and employ Nazi methods to get what he wants. And what does he want? In the series, the Man in the High Castle is producing these films that show the Allies winning the war, “a different world, a better world,” as Juliana says (S1E2). These films are interpreted as a danger to the current world order (not made explicit why), but it is the Führer (still alive in the series) who is really obsessed with them. Kido’s efforts can thus be interpreted as done in the service of Japan, but is really of benefit, of primary interest, to the German Reich. Even if sovereign Japanese, then, Kido is portrayed as a delegate of the Reich—this despite the tensions between the two empires even more palpable in the series. This is part of the series’ larger point about how the Empire of Japan is no less fascist than Nazi Germany. In this regard, the statement, “There are no Jews in Japan, after all,” is particularly troubling. Japan, it would seem, in contrast to the novel’s “humanitarian considerations,” is not genocidal against Jews only because they don’t have to be. This raises the question, then: If not Jews, who? If fascism arises in another setting in which perhaps Jews are not the target (but perhaps they also are), who will be put in their place?

The series is able to raise this question because it refuses to whitewash Japanese brutality, thereby clarifying that fascism is not specific or limited to Nazi Germany. But does Dick really whitewash the Japanese (if so, like his depiction of women, this would be curious)? Why do the Japanese feel “nice” in the novel? This, I argue, is due to the way in which they are set in contrast to the Nazis, who are portrayed as extremely bad, in fact, as absolutely evil—precisely because white. In chapter 6, along with other high-ranking Imperial officials Tagomi is summoned to the Japanese Foreign Office for a briefing on the death of the Reich Chancellor (essentially the Führer, Hitler already dead). Speculating on possible replacements, the Foreign Office spokesman offers a “dry, slow recitation” of Nazi notables and their achievements (a scene of comparable horror is yet to be presented in the series, which is more focused on the Resistance), culminating in “Doctor Seyss-Inquart. Former Austrian Nazi, now in charge of Reich colonial areas, responsible for colonial policies. Possibly most hated man in Reich territory. Said to have instigated most if not all repressive measures dealing with conquered peoples. Worked with Rosenberg for ideological victories of most alarming grandiose type, such as attempt to sterilize entire Russian population remaining after close of hostilities. No facts for certain on this, but considered to be one of several responsible for decision to make holocaust of African continent thus creating genocide conditions for Negro population. Possibly closest in temperament to original Führer, A. Hitler” (99). At this point, Tagomi feels that he’s “going mad”: “I have to get out of here; I am having an attack. My body is throwing up things or spurting them out—I am dying” (99). When he recovers, he realizes, “There is evil! It’s actual like cement” (100). Seyss-Inquart may be the worst, but he is not the only one—Göring, Himmler, Goebbels, Heydrich and Schirach already having been described by the spokesman—his acts not the only hallmarks of Nazism. In fact, Tagomi missed what the spokesman said next: “The Home Islands take the view that Germany’s scheme to reduce the populations of Europe and Northern Asia to the status of slaves—plus murdering all intellectuals, bourgeois elements, patriotic youth and what not—has been an economic catastrophe. Only the formidable technological achievements of German science and industry have saved them. Miracle weapons, so to speak” (101).

On election day, I tweeted #breakthewall, which turned out all too optimistic, America choosing instead to reinforce its defenses warranted in important ways (given the economic convulsions wrought by globalization and automation) but ultimately alarming (resistance to the system culturally expressed through reactionary nostalgia—“make America great again”—at its limit white supremacy, but which is not just about race, constituting, rather, a powerless attempt to get back at power through simple solutions, including race, by those who feel like “strangers in their own land”). When the realization dawned on me that this was actually happening as I listened to the news in between bouts of writing, I wrote, We’re going to have to live through this for decades to come, as if the campaign wasn’t bad enough: explicit white supremacy, sexual assault, tax evasion, worker stiffing, the narcissistic cult of personality, vicious and resentful law and order, the undoing of justice in the Supreme Court, schadenfreude as political discourse, the authoritarian desecration of democracy—Trump promising to buttress the wall (ironically enough the “middle” rather than the “establishment”) that proclaims itself as America.

I had to go to work the next day. Even though I couldn’t sleep the night before and didn’t want to get out of bed the morning after, I forced myself to follow my routine, thinking that this was precisely the moment in which I should be with other people. True enough, I had good conversations at the office (not to mention texts, calls, and emails from family and friends), if cloaked (for me at least) by this sense that apocalypse had just happened, and threatens to come soon. I had to teach at the end of the day, and I was worried about what I would say, if I should say anything, and how I would be … With most students overly quiet as if containing something within themselves and at least one so visibly distraught, I decided I would address what had happened before anything else. It was really hard to talk, to say something coherent, especially with a student (one of the smartest in the class) smiling mockingly, as though shaking his head and asking, What’s the relevance of all this?, Aren’t you blowing this out of proportion?, and I hadn’t cried yet so was worried that I would, right there, in front of the class, but after repeating the same phrase quite a bit (“Sad day, dark day …”), I ended up introducing the term “negative emulation” (don’t know where it came from): If you see them up there, doing something bad, something you don’t agree with, something you think shouldn’t be, or maybe you agree in which case this doesn’t apply to you, but if you don’t, then do the exact opposite. If only at the level of personal interactions, your immediate environment, foster a world different from that which they want to recreate. Try to be kinder, more open, genuinely interested in those who are different. Do something different, if only in your local world. Be different.—Hopelessly naïve, I know, but I’d prefer hopelessly naïve or even double-faced over explicitly injurious any day.

As the initial shock starts to wane, I find myself thinking about what’s next. The simultaneous protesting (the electoral college, election conditions, media coverage, systemic rigging by the establishment blowing up on itself, the reactionary ideology that may claim to but, despite post-election demonstrations of crossing across the aisle to uphold the so-called “peaceful transition of power,” is not intended to represent all or, for that matter, “America”: #notmypresident) and acceptance of loss (when we can least afford it, given global warming, race and gender relations, the new Gilded Age, etc.) may lead, especially since it’s “painful, and will be for a long time” (given the legislative damage it will inflict, the cultural reversal it promises, the symbolic injury of the campaign legitimated by the vote), to long-term strategizing beyond electoral politics (in which, yet again maybe I’m being naïve, the humanities can be a focal point, especially in the age of fact resistance) and in electoral politics, which, however, requires that the Democratic Party (the one upended by Trump, after all, registered Democrats crossing over to vote for him) and, more broadly, the left take a long, hard look at itself (even if Clinton won, despite their behavior—the stubborn determination to make Obama fail, the obstructionism, the shutting down of the government, re-districting—the Republicans still won everything: the Senate, the House, Governor’s Mansions, soon the Supreme Court; and they did so under the magnification of the worst, brinksmanship already their order of the day; there remains, of course, the question: would the magnification work with, be had by, or upend the worst?), its tendencies (opportunistic corporatism and progressive marginalization; idealistic self-fragmentation and cynical conflation of all liberalisms), and a way forward (which necessitates, I argue, against defense, polarization and [fact] resistance, that we form the Resistance [as social movement]).

[Update on 11/20/2016]

After the election (11/9 like 9/11?), everything feels different. One of the ways in which this manifests for me is how I can’t seem to brush off the question, Does white mean white supremacist? (Of course it does not, it can’t be, but after the election, it’s harder to tolerate its truth.) It seems to me that the only way this can not be true—and it cannot be—is for those who are identified as white to fight white supremacy. Saying that “I’m not racist” or “No, white supremacy is just a fringe tendency” or “It’s just the ‘culture’ where I belong” or “It’s just a preference” is too easy—racism more insidious when it’s disavowed, racism more able to do its work through a bearer unaware. And “white” is not just an identification of those who are identified as white, white supremacy an investment not only of whites, direct or indirect. In this way, the election calls on all of us to consciously fight white supremacy. This does not necessarily mean fighting whites, who have fought supremacy in the past—but never by themselves. Likewise, this does not mean that racism will not unconsciously outwit us. However, vigilant awareness (which does not have to be paranoid suspicion) of our own complicity may be our best safeguard against the tide that, through simplicity, has already given white supremacy a major victory.

As the presidential nominating process is set to begin, it’s time to reflect on Hillary Clinton, once again the presumptive, but challenged, Democratic nominee. She is someone that a lot people love to hate, both on the right and the left. Is it possible to criticize her without lending oneself to this culture’s deep-seated misogyny? If she embodies the contradiction between policy and identity, what are we choosing if we choose her, and is there another choice? Here are some noteworthy perspectives:

Mark Shields: Hillary is a liar, Bernie is authentic.

“The Clinton campaign this week, in perhaps the stupidest act of the entire year, took the one person who’s a character witness, who is a privileged observer of Hillary Clinton, who can testify about Hillary Clinton as a human being, as a mother, as a grandmother, as somebody who’s always been there, who’s been a force for decency in her life, who’s taught her and loved her, Chelsea Clinton, and turned her into a political hack. I mean, it was just absolutely reckless and stupid. They neutralized the advantage and the value of Chelsea Clinton by turning her into an attack dog on a phony charge that Bernie Sanders, a supporter of single-payer national health insurance, is somehow going to dismantle children’s health and Medicare. Bernie Sanders, whatever else, you look at him, he’s not pretty. He’s not a backslapper. […] He’s not a storyteller. He’s not somebody you say, oh, gee, I want a cuddly Bernie, or, boy, he’s a well-polished guy. He’s authentic.”

“Perhaps the sexism—in both overtly hostile and less visible but still insidious ways—has helped stoke the fires of animosity towards Clinton while, at the same time, creating an almost impossible standard for her. Unlike her male opponents, Clinton has to be far more careful and measured in what she says and does. To be free from a strict choreography of words and actions is a form of male privilege that Hillary Clinton cannot access. Authenticity has been a keyword during this election season. And our culture, suffused with sexism, plays the role of the arbiter of a candidate’s authenticity. Clinton must tread lightly: she cannot appear too strong without risking her likability ratings; she cannot appear too vulnerable without her credibility suffering.”

“The conservative political blog RedState maligned Clinton as proof that “even a homely woman can sleep her way into power.” […] Degrading comments about Clinton’s age represent the most unadulterated form of sexism levelled against her. In a culture obsessed with youth, fresh-faced femininity is valued while “older” women (who may be as young as fifty) are made to feel invisible. […] Some of the concerns about Clinton are very personal, but even these have an element of sexism in them. Many Americans, for example, feel a pointed disaffection for her. She faces what pundits call a likability problem. Voters perceive her as competent and hardworking, but not warm. A recent series of psychology studies by Princeton professor Susan Fiske showed that women who present traditionally feminine traits (stay-at-home moms, for example) are viewed as warm, but not competent, and are treated dismissively. Women considered less traditionally feminine (including lesbians, athletes, feminists, and working women) are not thought of as warm, but are perceived to be competent, and face a more antagonistic form of sexism. Women, unlike men, are rarely perceived as warm and competent, which, as Fiske explains, puts them in a “catch-22 situation.””

David Remnick: Hillary is attacked because of her gender; in the same vein, she exploits it.

“The U.N. Secretary-General’s report [published in 2015] is a progress report on the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which grew out of the 1995 World Conference on Women. At that conference, Clinton, as First Lady, gave an unsparing assessment of so many of the grimmer aspects of the female condition: political exclusion, discrimination, rape as a weapon of war, genital cutting, forced illiteracy, forced abortion and sterilization. She performed in a way that suggested both conviction and political talent independent of her role as the President’s wife and counsellor. The speech was as eloquent in its way as Barack Obama’s “race speech,” in the 2008 campaign, not because of its radical originality––like Obama’s, it was rooted in decades of progressive thought––but because of its potential to affect policy and mainstream opinion. “It is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights” was a message she delivered with clarity, particulars, and force.

This was one reason that the press conference last week—given, presumably, as Clinton was preparing to announce a run for the Presidency, in 2016—was so dispiriting. At that moment at the U.N., she should have been returning to those feminist themes, but she used the opportunity to claim that she was only trying to protect the sanctity of her communications about her “yoga routines,” her daughter’s wedding, and her mother’s funeral. This was a notably transparent exploitation of gender. It’s one thing for a politician to be stupid; it is quite another for her to assume that we are. And what to make of a politician who protested the war in Vietnam and investigated the Watergate scandals but now writes a valentine to Henry Kissinger in the Washington Post—a book review in which Clinton calls Kissinger “surprisingly idealistic”? The peoples of Chile, Cambodia, Argentina, Bangladesh, and East Timor surely want to know more.”

In “Différance” (1968), perhaps the most systematic articulation of something—“literally neither a word nor a concept”—he “has been able to utilize” in previous works, Jacques Derrida begins by highlighting the letter a and attempting to explain the neologism, intended “less [as] a justification […] than an insistent intensification of its play” (3). Derrida argues that what he calls a “neographism” is “a lapse in the discipline and law which regulate writing” (3), disrupting it. By thus coining différance to highlight the lapse in writing, language, and the order of signs in general, Derrida performs one of the most significant critiques of the structuralist theory of language developed by Saussure, inaugurating the poststructuralist practice known subsequently as deconstruction.

Derrida’s performance takes place in the context of the tradition (of linguistics, of philosophy, of thought) he aims to critique. The Western tradition, as Derrida has argued in previous works, is characterized by a set of hierarchical binary oppositions. Two elements (terms/concepts/things) are distinguished and then one is elevated as primary while the other is relegated as derivative or supplementary. In the philosophy of language, this takes the form of the privileging of speech over writing. In Plato (as in the Phaedrus, read by Derrida in “Plato’s Pharmacy,” interpreted by Christopher Norris in Derrida), for example, writing is considered a “mere inscription” consisting of “alien, arbitrary, lifeless signs” (Norris 30). These written signs serve as “mere substitutes” for speech, which, in contrast, expresses immediately, without contamination, and actively the truth (30). Speech, according to this tradition, is close(r) to the source, the origin. This proximity gives it the character of an “authentic living presence” (33). The Socratic dialogue exemplifies this: the vocal exchange between two speakers—thanks to the powers of reasoning of one (i.e. Socrates)—leads to the truth. In contrast, in writing, “the logos is deflected from its proper, truth-seeking aim and abandoned to a state of hazardous dependence on the vagaries of unauthorized transmission” (33). Such hierarchical logic, Derrida points out, is operative not only in Plato but in the whole Western tradition. This is made evident by binaries such as speech/writing, presence/absence, immediacy/delay, origin/supplement, correspondence/arbitrariness, truth/untruth, reason/unreason …

This order is precisely what Derrida is trying to subvert in the coinage of différance. As a preliminary formulation, it can be said that the choice of différance—with an a instead of an e—is a performance, even a stunt, by Derrida to reinforce his point. In French, the nasal sounds en and an sound exactly the same. Thus in uttering them (as Derrida explains comically on page 4), one cannot tell whether one is saying différence or différance. Thus, with a word like différe/ance, the word’s meaning can only be gleaned, apprehended, and understood by looking at the graphic inscription, i.e. by looking at writing. As Derrida says, the “marked difference between two apparently vocal notations, [… the difference in which their meaning consist,] remains purely graphic: it is read, or it is written, but it cannot be heard” (3). The same motivation underlies Derrida’s choice of neographism instead of neologism, logos being associated with reason and speech, graph with the written sign. In other words, différe/ance is one of those revelatory instances in which the order where speech supposedly expresses or manifests instantly and immediately—without delay, without confusion, without detachment (no remove)—self-present meaning or truth (as discerned by reason) is disrupted. What more, it is writing—supposedly but derivative—that performs the function that speech can’t. What was thus thought to be secondary—supposedly alien, lifeless, late; mere inscription, mere substitute, but supplementary—is revealed to have the primary function in the system, on which it turns.

Derrida goes further. He asserts that “a written text [… always and already] keeps watch over my discourse [including spoken discourse]” (4). “We will be able neither to do without the passage through a written text [i.e. we need to pass through writing], nor to avoid the order of the disorder produced within it” (4). That is to say, contrary to the suggestion that speech precedes writing, Derrida claims that speech, in fact, is immersed in an economy of writing. As Norris explains, “speech […] is already inscribed in a differential system which must always be in place before communication begins. And this system is very much like writing, in the sense that written signs have traditionally been thought of as marks of difference, supplementarity or non-self-present meaning” (92). Derrida is hinting here at Saussure’s theory of signs, in particular at Saussure’s assertion that individual units derive their meaning by virtue of their difference from other units, an assertion that has gained Saussure’s theory the appellation “differential.” Derrida, however, refers to this differential system not as language or semiotics, but as writing, based on the tradition’s own derogatory descriptions of this supposed derivative of speech. In the process, Derrida blurs the distinction between the two terms: speech/writing. More importantly, the hierarchy between them is overturned, as writing turns out to be the unexplored yet key term in the opposition (hence Derrida’s call to substitute grammatology for Saussurean semiotics, which is yet different from Deleuze and Guattari’s pragmatics.) After all, as Norris explains, “if language is always and everywhere a system of differential signs, […] then the classical definition of writing would apply to every form of language whatsoever [including speech]. ‘From the moment that there is meaning there are nothing but signs” (85).

Derrida’s use of différance has been described as a performance, even a stunt. This is not to say that the operation Derrida uncovers is somehow unique to the word différance. Derrida asserts that what is at work in différance is at work in signs in general, that, in other words, différance is at work in language all the time, perhaps as a “natural” operation, or the way in which it works. This is illustrated by différance itself, a “new” term that, as Derrida points out, is in fact barely a neologism. The a of différance simply comes from the present participle of the French verb différer, différant (8). In English, this is tantamount to saying, instead of difference, differing (as in the differing of opinions, the –ing form of the verb functioning as a noun, a gerund). Différance, the word, is thus not a radically new term invented from nowhere but is, like différance itself (the mechanism Derrida uncovers), an essential part of how language works, which has been at work in the tradition—albeit hidden, buried—all this time. Take, for example, the assertion, long held in the tradition, that language (especially Western languages) is a phonetic system, i.e. a linguistic system premised on the correspondence between symbols and sounds. With regards to this, Derrida boldly claims that “there is no phonetic writing” (5). “There is,” Derrida argues, “no purely and rigorously phonetic writing. So-called phonetic writing, by all rights and in principle, and not only due to an empirical or technical insufficiency, can function only by admitting into its system nonphonetic ‘signs’ (punctuation, spacing, etc.). And an examination of the structure and necessity of these nonphonetic signs quickly reveals that they can barely tolerate the concept of the [phonetic] sign itself” (5). As with writing and speech, what was supposedly secondary, the nonphonetic, turns out to underlie what was held as primary, the phonetic. In fact, even Saussure’s play of difference between signs in which their meaning consist “is in itself a silent play,” i.e. is nonphonetic, not unlike the graphic difference between the letters (5).

In highlighting différance, Derrida’s goal is not merely to invert the hierarchy, say by putting writing over speech, and undermine the primacy of the privileged elements, e.g. truth and reason. Derrida’s target is not any particular element, but the order of binary oppositions itself. Thus after he undermines speech, spoken language, and phonetic writing, Derrida notes that “graphic difference itself [as discerned in the written text] vanishes into the night [literally, since without light, it cannot be seen], can never be sensed as a full term” (5). Derrida points out the way in which “the difference marked in the ‘differ( )nce’ between the e and the a eludes both vision and hearing” (5). Rather than asserting a différance that writing somehow has privileged access to, Derrida points toward “a différance which belongs neither to the voice nor to writing in the usual sense, [… but] between speech and writing, and beyond the tranquil familiarity which links us to one and the other, occasionally reassuring us in our illusion that they are two” (5).

I must admit that when Bruce Jenner first came out as Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair (7/2015; see full article), I took notice but didn’t think of the act as particularly significant. In the context of the other news of the day—the police killings of unarmed black civilians, the enduring recession, currently coming to a head in the Greek debt crisis—my gut instinct was to criticize the moneyed and celebrity position from which Caitlyn is coming. My first thoughts went something like: of course she can afford to do that, unlike others who might feel the same way, indeed others who have more urgent medical concerns, but do not have the resources of the top 1%; of course she can think about being “who she really is” rather than settling with a given he can’t change, indeed can’t even think about, given more grounded preoccupations, say, with daily material needs; of course she would have a commodified response to a crisis revolving around gender felt as personal, given his own commodification as an Olympic athlete and American hero.

Jenner’s acceptance of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at ESPY (see clip) dispelled these reservations. This award was a necessary follow-up to the Vanity Fair cover as it situated Jenner in context, both where he’s coming from and where she plans to go, in the process driving home the significance of Caitlyn, all this taking place in an especially pertinent setting. Yes, there are other problems that do need our attention, but those pertaining to gender and sexuality, as highlighted in this case by a sports event, are not to be ignored. The harrowing statistics of trans violence in this country alone highlight the political urgency of trans justice, which Jenner claims was a motivation for her to come out. The same goes for arguments that question whether Jenner, and not some other athlete who has gone through more significant hardship, deserves the award (see brief profile of Arthur Ashe). There are, indeed, other minorities who are also oppressed, perhaps more than the subjects that Caitlyn represents, certainly more than Jenner herself, but pointing this out is less an argument against giving Caitlyn a public platform than an argument for devising more ways to grant recognition. This is so especially since subjective recognition, like struggle itself, is not exclusive, but shared and contagious. As such, the complaint, “What about X? Don’t they deserve it more?” (contrast to: “Our fellows won something they needed!”), is counterproductive. Among other things, it resentfully and unwittingly participates in the divide-and-conquer strategy by which the dominant keeps the oppressed, well, oppressed.

As for Jenner’s privilege and celebrity, first, when it comes down to it, it means nothing; and secondly, it is, in fact, an advantage, and not only for Jenner. Everyone who is privileged in some way (thanks to background, talent, looks, etc.) knows that such privilege proves cheap in the face of an attribute that could be exploited as a weakness. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick points out in Epistemology of the Closet, there is always a closet in which one finds oneself in, no matter how out one thinks him/herself to be, no matter how open the environment. This is because you can be respected for something in which you are considered “good” or “strong,” and lose all that respect because you’re gay, or be respected only despite being black, Hispanic, or Asian, or be excluded and ridiculed for not being one of the boys. At the same time, Jenner does have privilege, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, because she is privileged, Jenner has the resources with which to fight, and, it must be noted, for a group of people deemed and treated as the lowest of the low, including in the gay community. Privilege buys (some) power (in some contexts), and it is the use to which power is put that is to be judged, not privilege by itself.

In fact, Jenner’s performance of the ex-“American hero” now identifying as and standing up for gender outcasts—already ironic—ironically makes him more critical than the mainstream LGBTQ movement. After all, the current thrust of the gay mainstream is heavily weighted toward marriage and the “proper” “type” of gay, undoubtedly a compelling factor leading to its recent victories, its acceptance in the mainstream. The price of this has been the disavowal of the less proper type of queers, notably trans, despite the fact that it was trans activists in Stonewall that gave birth to the modern LGBTQ movement. Similarly, of course ESPN has a vested commercial interest in presenting Jenner the award and that such presentation involves her commodification, but why single out a transgender woman, and not the other athletes, heteronormative or not, as the object of televised exploitation? And so what if Jenner is commodified as she is publicly recognized? Does commodification necessarily blunt the critical force of her public performance? In fact, doesn’t commodification, given its speed, its shock or seduction value, its mass dissemination, propel Jenner’s performance? In a world where capitalism attempts to penetrate virtually everything, does pointing out that something is entangled really amount to a critique? More importantly, does entanglement necessarily foreclose critique of that to which one is entangled and, it must not be forgotten, of the other operative axes of power that may or may not be aligned with capitalism, say, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and patriotism?

These attempts, ostensibly well-meaning, to dismiss or minimize the significance of Caitlyn Jenner miss something crucial about her. Criticisms from the right make up a reactionary backlash (what else is new?) against the way in which Caitlyn has deconstructed the American hero, proving him not only to be unknown (as expressed by Caitlyn’s constant remark, “Before this, nobody really knew me”), perhaps unknowable, because hollow—a mere ideal, a fantasy—but, indeed, as the opposite of what he’s thought to be, i.e. as deviant, wretched, monstrous, as someone undesirable and unworthy of admiration, at least not in the conventional sense, in other words, as queer. These reactionary criticisms, in other words, root from a nostalgia for something that’s not there but is believed in, an anchor of identity that Bruce used to be, but which Caitlyn has shattered. Whereas these nostalgic criticisms do everything they can to erase what Caitlyn has revealed, more sympathetic criticisms, including those coming from the fellow oppressed, miss what it was that Caitlyn showed the world. For in courageously standing up there to flamboyantly parade her gender for all the world to see, what Caitlyn Jenner has showed, in these times of enduring racial persecution, unending economic recession, and the institutionalization of gay marriage, is the centrality of sexuality itself, not against but along with other axes of struggle.